And Have You Changed Your Life? Episode 429
Life presents itself to us in all its strangeness and beauty, but given the kind of beings we humans are, we might find ourselves tuning out or looking away. And that is so easy to do. But what if we started to see life as a question that is being asked of us, a call to pay attention and to receive the world, and to respond in the light of that? What aliveness might come? What possibilities for actually living our lives? And what generosity might we find towards this one life we are given?
This week's Turning Towards Life hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Our source for this week:
The Swan
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds –
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?
Mary Oliver
Photo by Timothy Abraham on Unsplash